Looking at the Big Picture ... How's your View?

Block Island, Rhode Island from Shane's and my airplane window.
Shortly after take off for our trip across country, we were fortunate to catch this beautiful sight of Block Island, RI, plopped 12 miles off the coastal beaches near our home in Matunuck, where Shane goes to school, September thru June.

It was as if we were flying over our "Big Picture", seeing our Rhode Island home pass below, as we flew westward to California where his father lives, and where much of our lives unfold and gather steam. This "Big Picture", living on and with the infulences of both coasts, has 'little picture' challenges that make relationships complex, finances stressed and work schedules strained. Yet, having both coasts in our lives, and his father's love and time, is indeed a big picture I hope we can sustain, without further undue stress and strain. I pray to be in the winds of Grace. I need to work more pointedly on increasing my earnings wherever I am, to get financially secure and comfortable enough to support a bi-coastal life, for both of us, without any reliance on friends and family, other than what should duely come our way from Shane's father (even if it means our time out west are only "visits.")

In my "big, big picture", I dream to be financially able to build a "green" home in the Pecos Mts of New Mexico, where I'll write, practice and teach yoga, and watch the sun set glowingly over the desert hues. To explore my wisdom years with the comforting echoes of pinions and juniper hollowed hills would be glorious. Hmmm... 'still unfolding these images. I currently, and actually have had on and off over the past five years, a love relationship with an interesting man that seemingly keeps keeping on and I really can't imagine it ever stopping. It's an odd one, but I do hope my relationship with this man continues, as long as it's an "us" relationship, well into our wisdom years and wildest traveling dreams. And I do hope and have intention to explore more of this great big wonderful world with my son Shane too. He is and I bet would really be an interesting sort to travel abroad with. These "big pictures within my big picture" have yet to be drawn in the clouds of our undefined, deep and abiding ways. My real goal is to now come truly into myself as a money maker while being of service as an Anusara (tm) yoga teacher, natural health educator, informational and creative writer, memoirist, mother and traveler.

In the mean time... Shane is now in week two with his Papa in the Redwood forest of northern Sonoma, with three and half more weeks to go. We talk daily at length, mainly about his day and LEGOS. I appreciate my relationship with my son, and value it's deep bond of respect, trust and love, and it's lighter level of joyfulness and play. I never tire of his company and although I miss him dearly, I am extremely happy for his growing time with Daddy, and with California (which is it's own separate relationship to be in).

I also got to be with my mother and father after my weekend in CA. It was a short, but expansive few days, from Tuesday to Friday, where I got to explore my relationship with my father while he regains what healthy days he has remaining in his vital but elderly and ill self. It's time warping, being with aging parents, as images and memories of my life prior to the time of my send off from "home" as a college student, clash with the years I became an adult afterward. My Dad's big picture includes almost sixty years with my loving, precious mother, and has led to his now old age and traumatic illnesses and triumphant comebacks (from Lung cancer and other ailments, that have occured since his April 7th admittance to the hospital). What a full circle we live from birth to death, what frameless pictures and stories we create as our souls intermingle and flow from body to body in God's glorious big picture.

Like the above Galaxies spiraling from energy centers to expansive releases, we live with so many unknowns, so many possibilities, so much chaos and so many patterns, of life and death, creation and destruction, beauty and beastiness. In Sanskrit, the language of yoga, we call the magnificent occurrances, Liela, the predictable ones Karma and the process of destruction and parrallel creation Shiva/Shakti energy. All the chaos creates "big pictures" and the true beauty is in the presence of GOD, the Supreme Intelligent One, whom connects the flow of our souls, so we are all ONE, in this Universe of Divine Consciousness together.

What is your big picture? Accept that it is to be filled with the chaos of the unknown, but project the images of a defined existence being lived with a fulfilled heart, and an ever burgeoning soulfueled story.